The Spider's Web
by crazybeagle
Summary: Two weeks after the Promised Day, the largest organized crime family in Amestris kidnaps Alphonse, to punish the brothers for a double murder that they can't remember committing.
1. Chapter 1

There was a reason that Roy Mustang had kept the Elric Brothers far, far away from any cases that involved the deadly, sprawling spider's web that made up the syndicates of organized crime across Amestris. It wasn't really his division, anyways, and beyond his depth of comprehension and experience, so it was certainly not a can of worms that he was about to foist upon any of his subordinates intentionally. Ed and Al weren't naïve; Roy knew that to at least some degree they realized that many of the notorious atrocities that had made the news—or ones that at least had reached the investigations division that Hughes used to try so desperately to keep away from the prying eyes of the press— were a little too clean, too baffling, too _calculated_ to have been the random crimes of some wayward soul.

And then, of course, there were the _names _that everybody knew to watch out for, rumors that spread and circulated far and wide about Amestris' infamous families.

Namely, the Valeras.

_Valera, Valera…. _The name had been a thorn in Roy's side, and, more namely, in Maes Hughes's side, for years. After Maes's death, Roy had been far too preoccupied with the more immediate threats within the government to pay any heed to the celebrated family of steel magnates from the South. Much of the railway lines across the country were comprised of highest-quality Valera steel. Its current CEO, Peter Valera, was famously wealthy, and kept his name in the newspapers _not_ for being one of the most cold-blooded orchestrators of mass-murder Amestris had ever known, though that was common knowledge by word of mouth, but for his charity work. Hell, there was even a Valera Orphanage in Central. Funny, though, that two weeks after its opening, three bodies had been found chopped to bits in a dumpster in South City, half-mauled by rodents by the time the police had found them, and there had been no doubt in Roy's mind who was responsible.

The brilliance of Peter Valera was that none of his allegations could ever be pinned on him. They never once even made it to court. Maes had suspected that it was because he had rats, a perfectly orchestrated _network_ of rats, working in the military and police forces. But every attempt to do the same, to even get a single military operative inside Valera's well-oiled murder machine, always wound up in the disappearance or gruesome death of said operative in an unfortunate "accident."

And so Roy had always kept the Elric brothers steered quite clear of such cases because he knew that it was exactly the sort of thing that, if they ever got a firsthand taste of the horrors such a man could unleash by lifting a finger, they'd never be able to let it go. It was exactly the sort of gross injustice that neither of them would be able to stand, especially Ed, with that damned hero complex of his that he was lucky hadn't gotten him killed years ago. But Roy certainly wasn't about to have them die for it, especially when they had their bodies to regain.

And after the Promised Day, that goal fulfilled, it never even crossed Roy's mind that a soulless killing operation so flawless as the Valera corporation could ever touch the Elric brothers.

That was, until the night that Alphonse vanished from his hospital bed in Central.

He'd been there for two weeks already, frighteningly frail and hooked up to various tubes and machines while his body struggled to recover from its years left to waste away in front of Truth's Gate. But every time Roy had seen him, he'd looked perfectly content, if exhausted, and whenever Ed was with him, deeply happy. Whenever the two of them were wearing twin lopsided grins over some shared joke, or gold eyes flashing with mild irritation or amusement when they were arguing over something completely stupid like whether or not Ed had a crush on "that pretty nurse with the curly hair," it struck Roy how alike they were in physical appearance, as well, especially the more Alphonse recovered. He'd gained a bit of weight, and his cheeks didn't look so hollow, and some benevolent nurse had cut Al's hair short. _That_ was one physical difference that was probably for the better—long hair may have suited Ed fine, but on Al, the lank, heavy, dead length of it had just made him look more ill.

Ill he certainly still was, too weak to stay awake through the day and only just beginning to eat solid foods again, not even strong enough to get out of bed. And now he was _missing_.

When Roy had gotten the call, and then promptly drove to the hospital at a breakneck speed that would've gotten him arrested as a civilian and burst into the hospital room to see for himself, his gut plummeted as though he'd missed a step going upstairs. There was the bed, neatly made, all of the machines disconnected and turned off, the IV line still hanging from its hook and slowly _drip-drip-dripping_ its contents into a puddle on the ground.

And there was Ed, hunched over on the edge of the bed, toes brushing the linoleum floor, looking pale and stunned.

It was the sight of Ed first and foremost that stopped Roy dead in his tracks. Up to this point, Roy had been a whirlwind of activity, seeing red and with a sick feeling churning away inside him at the very thought of somebody doing such a thing to _Alphonse Elric_ of all people, and he'd already assumed that Ed would be in an absolute uproar by the time he arrived.

But something had stopped Edward dead in his tracks. Roy stepped into the room, slowly, noticing the clipboard that sat on Ed's lap, clutched in his very white knuckles.

"Edward?" Roy set a hand on his shoulder.

Ed looked up. His eyes were bleak, devastated in a way that almost hurt to look at. He wordlessly handed over the clipboard.

Roy took the clipboard, eyeing the notes scrawled on the paper. It was a list, in the neat, clinical handwriting of what he assumed must be one of the hospital's head doctors, of all of the people who had come into contact with Alphonse over the past two weeks. Several of them were civilian volunteers, as the hospital was severely overworked and understaffed in the deadly wake of the Promised Day. He skimmed it, both vaguely appreciating that Ed had already done as much as he could before he'd gotten there and also the cooperation of the doctors to come up with such a complete list given the inevitable disorganization of the hospital after such a disaster.

But one name, near the very bottom of the list, made Roy's heart stop.

_Primary Nurse: Marie Valera._

_..._

The first thing that Alphonse noticed when he came to was the low rumble of an engine. He _felt _it, like a deep throb that spread from his chest to every inch of him and made all his newly-restored nerves rattle and ache. The side of his face was pressed against warm leather, and something dark and woolen—and a more than a bit itchy—had been tucked around him like a blanket. He shivered nevertheless as he blinked dully up at a low, dark ceiling. It was chilly, and his fingers curled around the wool.

And that was when he realized he didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, or where he was.

He tried to push himself up on an elbow, but his body refused to listen. The muscles of his shoulder and arm felt like jelly beneath him, and he didn't know whether to attribute that to still-severe atrophy, or to…something else. His head felt fuzzy, his every thought muddled and slippery, and suddenly all he wanted to do was lay his head back down and go back to sleep. Whatever was going on, Ed could explain it to him later.

And with _that _thought, he was jolted into alertness.

_Ed._

Ed wasn't _here. _

But where was _here? _

"H-hello?" he managed, around a tongue that felt thick and dry and gummy. It was barely audible over the continued, painful thrum of the engine. _A car, _he realized, with a sense of vague dread. Something wasn't right here. "Hello?" he repeated, louder.

And then, from somewhere in front of him, he heard a little yelp, and something changed in the movement of the car. He heard tires skid. It seemed the car had lurched suddenly to the side before righting itself, as though the driver had been startled badly enough to momentarily lose their grip on the wheel. Al's stomach took a nosedive at the sensation.

A throat cleared. "So, you're awake." The voice floated back to him—a woman's, trembling slightly, but trying valiantly to sound matter-of-fact.

And then Al was confused again. He knew that voice.

"Nurse Marie?" he asked, slowly, squinting at the dark silhouette he could now vaguely make out in the driver's seat. And then he saw them—just black shadows against the harsh glow of street lamps, like wisps of smoke, but there was no mistaking them—there were those corkscrew curls of hers that Ed hadn't been able to take his eyes off of.

"Mm." The noise neither confirmed or denied it, but there was a frightened edge to her voice. She paused. "Are you cold?"

He stared blankly at the back of her head, the stiff way she seemed to be holding her neck. "A little," he said, and shivered, though he wasn't so sure it had to do with the chilly air at all. "Where are you taking me?"

She said nothing for a long moment, then let out a breath. "Just try and sleep now, Alphonse," she said.

And Al fell silent at that, dread tightening his chest even as exhaustion muddled his brain and made his eyelids heavy.

He did drop back off, but not before he heard Marie's shaky whisper.

"I'm sorry….I'm so sorry…."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

_The Spider's Web _

_Chapter 2_

When Al woke again, it was to the sound of an argument—one voice was a woman's, low, almost a hiss, and the other was more hushed and quavered slightly. That second one was Marie, his mind supplied blearily as he blinked around in near-complete darkness, looking for the source of the voices, each tone sharp in his ears and making him grimace. His head was pounding. The voices were overlapping—each seemed eager to talk over the other.

"—was I supposed to know, I wasn't given any information beyond just taking him and—"

"—_be _so dense, honestly, Maria, he's an _alchemist _and one of the most powerful in the country to boot.He could've transmuted a wide-open hole in the side of the car and slipped right out onto the highway—"

"—was on an extremely high morphine dose and he's kitten-weak, so I seriously doubt that, and at any rate, you _have _him and it's done with, so just tie him up _now_ if you want—"

"—_lucky _if Uncle doesn't hear about this, honestly, how could you be such an _idiot_—"

"—wouldn't do that to me, Viv, you _can't_," Marie's voice was now just as sharp as the other, with anger, but there was a definite undercurrent to it, one of terror. "You know what he'd do…"

"Then I suggest you don't screw up again," said the other voice, Viv's, coldly. She had a distinctive accent, Al thought groggily, trying to determine the direction the women's voices were coming from through the dark. She hit her vowels hard, and her consonants not hard enough, and it was an accent he'd definitely heard before—it was one that was widely associated with the industrial urban sprawls of Southern Amestris, big ugly cities that were mazes of factories and warehouses and smog. Al hated them. And while they might be the financial hub of the country, it was common knowledge that these polluted hell holes were lorded over by mob dynasties.

And at that thought, Al suddenly felt as though he'd swallowed a chunk of ice. He'd been about to make some sort of noise, let these people know he was awake and ask where he was and what they wanted, but he thought better of it. He held his breath, and continued to listen.

"_Again?_" Marie sounded nearly hysterical. "What the hell do you mean, 'again'? I'm going _home _first thing tomorrow. I am _not_ you people's errand girl. Not anymore."

"I think you'll find you _are_, Maria." Viv sounded bored with this conversation now. "Or are you so eager to disown your family? Besides, Uncle needs you to stick around for awhile. _Look after_ our prisoner." Something about the way she said it made Al shiver.

A beat of silence. "That wasn't part of the deal."

"You're the nurse in the family," Viv continued, nonchalant. "Can't have the little invalid fouling up the bedsheets, now can we? Come now, we have to show a bit more class than that."

"_You_ don't give a damn whether the boy wastes away completely in there."

"And neither should you," Viv snapped. Then she added, quietly, viciously: "Or are you forgetting what this _boy _has done? What he's capable of?"

A pause. "No."

"You'd do well not to." Al heard footsteps—a sharp, echoing _tap-tap-tap_—and what sounded like the flick of a switch. Suddenly, the room was flooded with light, and Al was blinking back tears as spots flooded his vision and his head gave a nasty throb. That was one thing he was still having trouble getting used to, having eyes that were actually sensitive to light intake, and were rendered completely useless in the absence of light, or, like now, by the presence of too_ much_ of it.

He drove the heels of his hands into his eyes, willing the nausea away, and started when heard his own name in Viv's cold voice.

"Alphonse Elric."

He drew his hands away from his face. He was lying on his side on a cot, the wool coat still tucked around him, in what appeared to be a dilapidated holding cell of some kind. Three walls were brick and smelled of damp, his bed pressed lengthwise against one, while the fourth, across from him, was made entirely of steel bars that stretched floor to ceiling. The whole scene was lit by dreary, flickering fluorescent bulbs.

Standing on the other side of the bars and staring in at him were two women—there was Nurse Marie, curls in wild disarray and face haggard with exhaustion, wearing some rumpled, ill-fitting blouse and skirt. She was staring quite fixedly at the ground, hands clenched at her sides. And next to her, the fingers of one hand curled like talons around a bar of the cell, was the woman who he presumed to be Viv.

She was attractive, Al supposed, in a severe sort of way, and looked to be around thirty. She wore a blazer and skirt of pristine black, perfectly-fitted, her dark curly hair that might've resembled Marie's wound into a tight knot on the back of her head. Her eyes were hard, silvery, and currently giving him an appraising look that made Al's skin crawl. The very white smile she flashed him reminded him of wolves and serpents.

"Vivian Valera," she continued, still smiling, apparently satisfied by the fact that her mere appearance was enough to unnerve Al. "And of course you're already acquainted with my younger sister, Maria Valera." At the sound of her name, Marie's eyes fluttered closed for a fraction of a second, but she gave no other acknowledgement that Vivian had spoken.

_Valera?_

Oh, this was bad…

Al made a valiant attempt to drag himself upright, but couldn't quite manage it. Marie must've been right about morphine in his system; his arms trembled like sticks below him and he collapsed back onto the cot. "What do you want from me?" Flopped out on a cot behind bars and panting from exertion, he couldn't have looked very intimidating, but he glared at them both nonetheless.

"Recompense," Vivian said, her grin sliding off her face. "Exact recompense."

Al blinked. "Recompense for what?" As far as he could remember, he didn't think he'd _ever _met a member of the famous Valera family, and he hadn't even known that Marie (Maria?) _was _a Valera. Nonetheless, as light glinted off of a key that suddenly appeared in Vivian's hand, which she slid smoothly into the lock of his cell, something horrible coiled in the pit of Al's stomach.

"I'll save the pleasure of _that_ explanation for my uncle," Vivian said, her lip curling as she strode into the cell, brandishing the key, Marie a fretting shadow in the open doorway.

And before Al quite knew what was going on, he'd been dragged from the bed and thrown down hard onto the floor, the force of it nearly driving the breath from his lungs. He heard the _snick_ of a gun being cocked, and his heart rose to his throat.

"Move and I'll shoot," Vivian said flatly, from above him. "Spread your arms out." She gestured down at his chest with the muzzle of a handgun.

"Viv—" Marie started to protest, but Vivian threw up a hand, and she fell silent.

"I'm only doing what you should've all along, Maria," Vivian said, a smirk tugging at her lips as she watched Al spread his arms out to either side of him, fingertips sweeping the gritty concrete floor.

And then, with a sharp stamp of Vivian's foot and a sickening _snap_, Al felt his right arm break.

Tbc~


	3. Chapter 3

The Spider's Web

Chapter 3

Al felt bile burn the back of his throat; his eyes watered. This woman, still looming above him with a gun angled at his chest, had just snapped both of his arms like twigs—with a twisted, practiced kind of precision, and without a second's hesitation.

And aside from the prick of an IV needle and a few vaccines he'd received in the past few weeks, this was the first actual _pain _he'd experienced in years. His eyes shuttered, and he willed himself not to be sick.

"_Vivian_." Marie's voice, floating somewhere above him, was quiet, disgusted.

Vivian snorted delicately. "Had to be done."

"Not like this." And suddenly Marie's voice was much closer—he felt a hand light on the side of his neck, his cheek. "You could've killed him just now from shock alone. _Look _at his arms."

Al was suddenly quite glad he couldn't see them. He kept his eyes shut tight.

"I thought you just wanted to bind them," Marie continued. "That'd have kept him from doing any alchemy just fine, right?"

"And bind them we _will_," Vivian said, impatiently, as though Marie had just said something spectacularly stupid. "Right now, in fact. And while we're at it," she added, thoughtfully, "may as well kill two birds with one stone and contact that brother of his."

Al's eyes shot open at that. Vivian was looking down at him, amusement tugging at the corner of her lips. There were about a thousand things on the tip of his tongue at the moment—_what do you want with him; if this is a hostage situation you're wasting your time; ransom money's no object if that's what you're after; if you lay a hand on him then so help me I will find a way to—_ but the stomach-turning pain that shot up both arms muddled his words before they even made it out of his mouth. Vivian was talking again.

"Pick him up, Maria," she said, with a light snap of her fingers. "Silas is waiting for us."

Al must've passed out in Marie's arms, because the next thing he knew he was in a different room altogether—more like a wide, round antechamber, windowless as his cell had been, with four hallways of dark brick splitting off from it. More fluorescent bulbs, brighter than those in the cell, hung above him, giving the whole scene a harsh, exposed cast.

He was on a chair—no, that wasn't right, it was too warm and uneven for that. He tried to wriggle around to get a look, but started when a pair of arms tightened around his middle. Instinctively, he reached down and tried to dislodge them, but cried out and let his hands drop as the pain reasserted itself.

"Keep still," a voice breathed in his ear. "Please." That was Marie.

It was all he could do to nod.

Vivian was sitting on a chair, legs crossed, a pair of reading glasses low on her nose as she flicked through a thick file folder that sat open on her lap. Next to her, an ancient-looking telephone box hung suspended half-off the wall by a collection of thick cords and wires. At the sound of Alphonse's yelp, her head snapped up.

She arched an eyebrow at the pair of them. "Whatever you're trying to tell him, Maria, don't waste your breath." She stood, clapped her hands. "Silas?" she called, her eyes searching a spot somewhere over Al and Marie's heads.

Another set of footsteps, behind them. Heavy, resounding, and horribly slow.

"Sometime today would be nice, Silas," Vivian snapped, turning towards the phone and picking up the receiver. She fished a slip of paper out of her pocket and glanced at it for a second before entering a number into the rotary dial with a finger that was now gloved in white leather.

And then a huge, close-shaven man wearing a tailored suit and an easy smile stepped into his line of vision, blocking his view of Vivian completely. In his hands was length of thin, bright yellow rope that Al guessed must be made out of some kind of twined plastic, and a tarnished cigarette lighter.

"I'm guessing you're Silas then?" Even to his own ears, his voice sounded small—tired, scared, and cracked by pain. So much for a brave front, then. Ed was always better at that, anyways.

The man's grin broadened, and he inclined his head slightly. Marie's arms squeezed him tighter. He wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but he took it that it wasn't a good sign.

"Get on with it, Silas," said Vivian between the _click-click-click _of the phone dial. "I'm nearly finished here."

Wordlessly, Silas knelt in front of Al, measuring out a length of the rope between the massive span of his arms, looking thoughtful. He smelled of sweat and cologne.

A second later, he'd caught hold of Al's forearms in his ham-like fists and was pressing them roughly together, and Al nearly fainted. Pinning one of his wrists to the inside of his opposite elbow while grabbing for the rope, Silas afforded Al a clear view of exactly the damage that had been done to his arms. It was easy to see, sans any substantial muscle or fat on arms that were rail-thin, the bowing of the bones where Vivian had stepped on them.

"Don't struggle," Marie whispered needlessly in his ear, and Al was struck with an odd, hysterical urge to laugh. He might have responded that he couldn't have anyways, if he hadn't thought that he'd vomit if he opened his mouth. His eyes burned.

Vivian, meanwhile, was apparently too engrossed in the telephone to take any heed of anything else happening in the room, her back to the rest of them and the receiver pressed to her hear. Her booted foot tapped the floor, a hand on her hip as she waited through the dial tone.

Silas tightened the first knot, and Al bit back a yell.

Vivian wheeled around suddenly, a chilling grin on her lips. "Edward Elric," she said into the receiver.

...

Thirty minutes later, Al was staring up at the ceiling of his cell, broken arms bound tight across chest with countless tight, fat knots of plastic rope. It was pointless to struggle against them; he'd have had better luck trying to free himself from iron shackles. He couldn't even work at the knots with his teeth, which had been his only idea before Silas had pulled out the lighter and melted the plastic around the knots just enough to fuse them together.

Marie had carried him back. She'd helped him use the cell's toilet, which he was far past the point of feeling embarrassment about, given him some water, and helped him lie down, tucking her coat around him again. She wouldn't meet his eyes the entire time, but she muttered something about bringing food and proper bedding for him, and painkillers if they'd allow it, later in the day. At the moment, she was sitting at the edge of his cot, head in her hands like she was fending off a migraine.

He knew he should be making her talk, get her to open up about who she was and just what the _hell _was going on here, but pain and dread kept him silent. He shivered, remembering Vivian's clipped, one-sided conversation with Edward.

_Betterton, _she'd said, every syllable crisp and clear as a bell, her accent notwithstanding._ The boarded-up police station at Twenty-fifth and Rosen Avenue. You be here by midnight tomorrow, alone, or we wring his scrawny little neck. _

So this was Betterton. He'd suspected as much—headquarters of Valera Steel, and the northernmost of the Southern industrial cities.

Vivian had held out the phone in his general direction after that bit—and he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Ed had heard every strangled cry and yelp he'd failed to stifle while Silas was tying those knots. Anger seethed in his gut. _They want him to think I'm being tortured…_

She'd twirled the phone cord in her fingers, silver eyes sparkling with satisfaction.

_Tell a soul about this and my people put a bullet through your commanding officer's brain. Am I clear?_

At that, she'd hung up.

He hadn't noticed the tears—whether borne from anger, pain, or desperation, he didn't know—until Marie was swiping his cheek with a thumb. Her hair hung in her face; he couldn't see her expression.

"Why are you doing this?" _Why did you take me away? Why are you helping these people? _

She was silent for a long time.

Then, barely audibly, "Because you're a murderer."

tbc~


	4. Chapter 4

_The Spider's Web_

_Chapter 4_

Ed stared at the receiver in his hand, vaguely surprised it hadn't snapped in two from the force of his grip.

Those. _Bastards._

The Betterton address. The Valera nurse. The fact that they'd called the phone in the barracks right in the middle of the day, apparently flaunting their confidence that the call would go unmonitored.

So this _was_ the doing of the syndicate. Had to be.

And if that was the case, then Ed didn't doubt for a second the threat to Mustang. These people had been under the military's radar for years, and if _Hughes, _who had discovered Bradley's plot ages before anybody else, couldn't get any dirt on these guys, then Ed knew there had to be rats. Rats who'd been well-established in Central for years, and who were obviously alive and well in the wake of the Promised Day, under the guise of allies.

And what better time to arrange an unfortunate accident for the Colonel than in the chaos of an overturned government.

Ed slammed the receiver back onto its hook.

_Why, _though? What the _hell _could the _Valeras _want with him, and why _now? _

What was perfectly obvious, though, he thought, as he trudged numbly back to the dorm, was that they weren't giving him a choice.

They were hurting Al.

At the sound of that woman's flat voice, completely indifferent to his brother's cries, which carried clear as day over the phone, Ed had thought he was going to throw up then and there. His hands were still shaking.

Well fine, they could have it their way. There really was nothing he could do but walk right into whatever trap they'd concocted for him. He'd be on the first train south, tonight.

But they were going to regret it. He'd make damn sure of that.

…

A few hours later, Marie made good on her word, re-entering the cell with a bundle of sheets and blankets under one arm and a thermos and box of saltine crackers under the other. Al had tried to sleep, but anxiety for Ed, and _pain,_ had made it impossible. He'd spent half the time with his eyes half-lidded, taking shallow breaths, trying not to be sick on Marie's coat as the throbbing in his bound arms worsened. It was better that they were immobilized, he supposed, but he felt nothing but _heat _and _tight_nessand _wrong_ness as a constant hum that under-rode the pain. He wondered if they'd swollen beneath the ropes—wondered if there was even enough of his arms _to _swell.

Marie set him down in a corner of the cell while she worked, making quick work of the sheets. Al nearly rolled his eyes at the sight of the neat hospital corners she'd made. The blanket was folded at one end, and, in the apparent absence of an available pillow, she'd rolled up her coat for him. She said nothing, even when she knelt next to him and helped him eat one or two of the crackers and take a few sips of what proved to be lukewarm chicken broth. His stomach was too queasy for anything else. It was only when she produced two small white pills from her pocket, and he eyed them suspiciously, that she broke the silence.

"They're just painkillers, I promise," she said. "Acetaminophen."

"And why are they letting me have these?" His voice was raspy—it was the first he'd spoken in hours.

She dropped her gaze. "Because Uncle wants you to be able to listen when he talks."

…

"You should rest," she said, sometime later, when she'd lifted him back into the cot, pulled the blanket up to his chin, and perched herself on the edge of it, near his head. Her hand lighted in his hair, shaky fingers petting it softly, somewhere between a nervous gesture and a motherly one. He wanted to turn away from her, but he didn't have the energy. He didn't especially _want _her here at all—no amount of taking care of him was going to make him forget that she'd kidnapped him, let him be imprisoned and badly injured, and without any explanation whatsoever, called him a _murderer_.

But he didn't really want to be alone right now, either.

He felt his eyelids getting heavy.

…

_Damn _it all.

Edward was gone. Roy stood in his empty dorm as dusk fell outside, and with it, the tenacious, lingering chill of the retreated winter months.

Hawkeye was at his heels, her eyes wide and lips pressed together tightly, failing to hide her own concern behind her usual mask of unflappable calm.

He'd obviously left in a hurry—bureau drawers stood open, sheets and blankets in a tangled, unmade heap hanging half-off the bed, papers littering the desk and floor.

Edward wasn't stupid. Sick with worry for Al or not, he had far better sense than to rush in and try to take on an entire syndicate by himself in some half-assed attempt at a rescue mission, especially now that sans alchemy, he was virtually powerless on his own.

Which meant that he'd been coerced somehow.

And Roy didn't even know where to _begin _to combat this.

Okay, that wasn't technically true—the first logical step would be to sic an investigative team on Ed's trail, to at least figure out where he'd gone, though if the Valera name was stamped on all of this, the first place to check would be Betterton.

But Betterton was a _big _city.

And that aside, by sending one of their own people to kidnap Al—Marie Valera had indeed disappeared from her apartment the night of Al's disappearance, leaving a bewildered elderly neighbor to look over her toddler son and daughter, twins—weren't they being kind of obvious about it?

Too obvious.

It was like they were rubbing it in their faces. Taking advantage of whatever invisible strings they were still pulling to whip the famous Elric brothers right out from under their noses. While the entire government was in shambles. When they didn't have the energy, personnel, or organization for anything more than a shoddy investigation. This Valera girl hadn't even bothered to hide her identity.

Either they were flaunting their complete untouchability for its own sake, or they were trying to make some sort of sick demonstration out of Ed and Al. Or both.

A growl of frustration came unbidden to his lips. He felt a dull pounding behind his eyes.

"Sir?" From behind, Hawkeye's hand touched his sleeve.

He shook his head, though it wouldn't help. Since the transmutation that had restored his eyesight, he'd been prone to frequent headaches, and with a country to rebuild and miles of rubble and red tape to wade through in the process, it had done nothing to improve his patience, or his temper.

And now that Ed and Al were gone…

Agitated, he let out a breath. "Coffee," he grumbled, resignedly, knowing she was about to drag him out and insist that he take some sort of break anyhow. "I need coffee."

Or something stronger.

She nodded her approval and practically steered him out of the room. She was looking a little pale herself, dark smudges under her eyes, a gauze bandage still peeking out under the collar of her uniform. She was very recently out of the hospital herself, and while Roy wasn't exactly thrilled with the fact that she wasn't at home recovering as her doctor had prescribed, he quite sure he'd be floundering without her right now. It hurt his head to even look at paperwork most days, and the still-healing wounds on his hands made it hard to hold a pen. He must've looked pathetically grateful her first day back, when she'd strode into his office, given him a salute and the tiniest of smiles, and wordlessly taken an enormous stack of files from the "to-do" pile on his desk.

Fifteen minutes later found him slumped over on the couch in his darkened office, his arm thrown over his eyes, the cleansing burn of liquor in his throat. Hawkeye had gone to fetch some of the older intelligence files on the Valera family, and apparently sensing his mounting headache, had refused to allow him to accompany her. And for the time being, he was all too happy to comply. "At the end of his rope" didn't begin to cover the way he was feeling at the moment.

He'd almost nodded off when, with a long, sharp, jangling noisethat seemed to bounce around like angry hornets between his ears, the phone rang. Force of habit had him bolt upright at the sound, but he regretted it at the immediate stab of pain in his head that nearly doubled him over.

By the second ring, he'd stumbled over to his desk.

"Mustang," he groused into the receiver.

"_Yes, I'm aware," _said the voice on the other end. It was a woman's, smooth and matter-of-fact, with a touch of the Southern urbanite accent. It made Roy's hair stand up on end.

"Who is this?" he demanded, eyes narrowing at nothing in particular.

The woman ignored him. _"Consider this just desserts for the Anthony Valera affair," _she continued, tone turning to ice.

Venom.

"Anthony Valera?" he repeated, blinking. Didn't matter that he hadn't dealt with a Valera case in ages, something about the name tugged at his memory in an unpleasant way…

And _then_ he remembered.

Oh.

_Oh._

_Shit._

The woman must've taken his lack-of-response as understanding. "_If you and your people leave well enough alone, then maybe at least one of them can make it back to you alive."_

Roy's hand tightened around the receiver; it pulled at the stitches. The vague dread that had been eating away at him for days solidified into something solid, tangible. Terrible. "Define 'leave well enough alone,'" he growled.

"_You halt your investigation, as of this very moment. You stop looking for them altogether, or your little prodigies die tomorrow. Count on it. And if that's not incentive enough, I'm holding the lives of your other subordinates as collateral on this promise." _A pause. "_Do I make myself clear, Colonel?"_

A roaring silence.

Then, "Yes."

Through gritted teeth.

Because he couldn't very well say anything else.

"_Excellent." _

The line went dead.

Tbc~


	5. Chapter 5

Al had no perception of time in this place. The pills had blessedly taken the edge off the pain, and he'd been able to get at least _some_ sleep. But some time later when those had worn off, he'd woken up, nauseated and teeth on edge, to find everything exactly the same as it had been. With the exception of Marie's presence.

Nighttime, then?

Al had no idea, but he was grateful she'd left the lights on when she'd gone. It was freezing, though, or maybe that was his starved body's inability to keep warm on its own. The concept of temperature was somewhat foreign to him, at any rate—he didn't trust his own perceptions of it. But _cold _was _cold_. He shivered, and attempted to wriggle a bit under the covers to get warm, but even that small motion made the edges of his vision go grey when his arms tugged against the ropes. He promptly gave over the attempt, staring at the plastered ceiling and trying very hard to think of nothing else until exhaustion overcame physical discomfort.

Wasn't easy, though, even without the physical aspect of it. Objectively, the place looked benign enough—it didn't appear to be a prison, but rather some kind of large, abandoned police office. Of course, he could be wrong, it wasn't like he'd seen all that much of it. The true threat of this place—the factor that simultaneously infuriated and terrified him, and made his pulse quicken and breath catch the second he'd realized that Marie had left—was the factor of the _unknown. _He was completely at the mercy of a force that had already been more than happy to demonstrate its cruelty to him and could very well do the same or worse to Ed, a force that he otherwise knew nothing about aside from the supposed notoriety and might of the family name. Just what kind of power _did _the Valeras have, that they could be so smug in their assurance that they could get away with what was about to be a double kidnapping right under the military's noses?

Well, the homunculi had had that kind of power.

But these were _humans. _

And what did they _want, _anyways? Marie was a distinctly, willfully unhelpful information source in that regard, which Al found ironic considering that the only bit of information she _had _let slip was a murder accusation.

This was making his head hurt.

Eventually, though, weakness of the body won out over restlessness of the mind, and the next thing he knew, Marie was there again, touching his shoulder lightly. "Alphonse?"

"Huh?" He blinked up at her. Her hair was damp from a shower and pulled back into a messy copy of her sister's impeccable bun, and she'd changed into a sort of black cotton shift that looked slightly too small for her. He wondered if she'd had to borrow it from Vivian—they were both small women, but Marie had a curvier, less compact build than her sister, who seemed to be made entirely of slender, vicious angles. The fabric stretched snug across Marie's chest and stomach as she leaned over him, a loose curl or two working itself free of the knot on top of her head and falling around her shadowy eyes. She looked as though she'd slept badly.

"I have food for you," she said quickly as she tugged the blanket off of him, voice full of an odd eagerness that unnerved him. It was almost manic. "And more painkillers if you want them." Nervous fingers darted out and tugged at a corner of his shirt, still the thin hospital-regulation scrubs he'd been wearing for the past few weeks. "Pity they wouldn't let me find you some new clothes before they bound your arms up like this," she was saying, words still tumbling out at an unnecessarily rapid pace. "You'll catch your death of cold, thin as you still are…. I'll see if I can get you some sweats, or at the very least an extra blanket—"

Al cut her off. "What's going on?"

She seemed to deflate. Her shoulders slumped. "Let's just get you ready for the day, okay?"

"You owe it to me to be honest here." He didn't mean it to sound cruel, but he sure as hell _meant_ it.

She opened her mouth, closed it again. She wouldn't look at him, but he could see her jaw working. Then, barely audibly, "My uncle's coming to speak to you today."

His mouth suddenly felt very dry. "Oh." His heart sped up a bit. Well, at the very least, after today he'd know why he was here.

If there _was _an "after."

…

He was barely able to eat any more today than he had the night before and could barely manage to gulp down the water required to take the pills, his stomach was wound up so tightly. Marie chastised him for it, laying a hand on his shoulder, which he hadn't realized was trembling—his whole body was—and told him that that was probably due to low blood sugar in addition to the fact that it was chilly today. _Or maybe, _he couldn't help thinking with some bitterness, _it's because I'm afraid your uncle the mob boss is going to kill me and I'm doing a terrible job hiding it. _

She wrapped him in the wool coat before she left, as well as the blanket, and propped him up against the wall. "He'll be here soon," she said over her shoulder as she left the cell, as if that was some kind of reassurance.

Al closed his eyes, tried to take a steadying breath. Whatever happened, he thought, his goal was to make it through the day. Ed would be here by tonight. And while that thought sickened him, it was also the only thought that kept him sane in the hours-long wait that followed.

By the tail-end of the wait, though, impossibly, he'd dozed off, because it was Vivian's sharp voice that jolted him back to alertness, causing him to bump his head hard against the brick wall behind him.

"Stellar first impression to make on the most powerful man in Amestris, Alphonse," she sneered from the other side of his bars. He blinked the sleep from his eyes, and saw that she was as impeccably dressed as the day before though all in white this time. A thin, bearded, gray-haired man in a dark three-piece suit was clutching her elbow, as if for support.

"Alphonse Elric," the man said, raising a bushy eyebrow. His voice was easy, genial, his city accent even stronger than Vivian's. Nothing about it suggested the frailty that was causing him to cling to his niece's arm so tightly. "Peter Valera. I believe I owe you an explanation."

"Yes." The word was out of Al's mouth before he could stop it.

Valera grinned. It was wolfish, and suddenly Al understood where Vivian had gotten it from. And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was in trouble.

Two minutes later, a folding chair had been set up, facing the bed and about five feet away from it, by none other than Silas, who had been following along behind Valera and Vivian in the hall. Al's breath caught at the sight of him. But he merely smiled, inclined his head at Al, and set up the folding chair, before taking up some sort of guard post outside the cell, with his back turned towards them facing the hall. Vivian helped Valera stumble into the cell and lowered him slowly into the chair, and it wasn't until they were seated across from one another that it struck Al just how _ill _the man looked. His cheekbones stood out sharply under sallow, yellow-tinged skin, his eyes sunken and hollow. Vivian hovered for a few seconds after he was situated, but Valera waved her away, knobbly wrist sticking out beneath the cuff of his suit.

"I fetch your cane and leave it with Silas," she said, turning to leave, shooting him a last concerned glance.

"Fine, fine," he said, impatiently, before turning back to Al. Apparently a little hurt at the dismissal, Vivian let the cell door slam behind her on the way out.

Valera turned back towards him, thick brows drawn together, scrutinizing him. "I saw you once," he said, at last. "In Central, when I was there on business. It was from a distance, but at seven feet tall, you were a bit hard to miss."

Al said nothing.

He looked intensely curious now. "Now as I'm sure you know, Alphonse, I have top-notch intelligence forces at my command, who look out for the good of my business. But in the process of going through their reports, I find out more than a little bit of everything that goes on in this country." He leaned forward a bit. "Now I can't say that I know all the specifics regarding your particular situation, but I'd wager that I know enough. And while I highly doubt I'd make the same decision in your position, I can respect it." His voice grew softer. "It'd be a shame to watch your brother grow old and die without you, wouldn't it?" He fell silent again, turning that appraising eye on him once more that made Al shiver harder.

His brows shot up again. "Are you cold, Alphonse?"

Al nodded, minutely, because he figured that would be a better response than _no, you just freak me out._

"Hm." And then Valera was reaching into his breast pocket with spindly fingers, and drawing what looked like small, clear glass cylinder out of it. He held it out for Al to see. "Well we can fix that." Al looked at the thing. He realized, with a little thrill of fear, that the _thing _was some kind of syringe, full of colorless liquid.

"Do you know what this is?" The question didn't sound inherently threatening.

"No, but I bet you're gonna tell me, aren't you?"

Valera looked genuinely startled at that. And _damn it, why _did Brother's tendency to mouth off to all the wrong people at all the wrong times have to rub off on him _now_?

And then Valera was laughing. A deep, delighted sound, his head thrown back. When he looked back at Al, that wolfish grin was planted firmly back in place, and Al's skin prickled. "And they told me your brother was the smartass," he said.

Valera flicked the syringe around between his fingers, and Al suddenly couldn't take his eyes off the thing. "You're right though, I will tell you." He pointed the syringe needle-first in Al's direction. "This right here is the second-greatest accomplishment of my nephew, the late bio-alchemist Anthony Valera."

"I don't know who that is," Al said slowly.

"Yes, yes you do." And all traces of humor were suddenly gone from Valera's face. "Because you, Alphonse, you and your brother are the reason he's dead." His eyes were hard. Al saw grief there.

And, beneath it, unmistakable rage.

"How is that possible if we've never met him?"

"Two years ago," Valera said, steadily, eyes never leaving Al's. "Crystal Ford. A little town thirty miles east of here. A young doctor by the name of Arthur Newbury. Yeah, you've met him alright. Your brother arrested him in on charges of murder and illegal alchemical experimentation on human subjects."

_Huh?_

The Newbury case? The name brought back vague memories—reports of people in the town dying of some mysterious, untraceable illness, their young doctor apparently unable to save them—the parcels of top-notch alchemical equipment that Ed had found on the doorstep of the doctor's home, express-shipped from Betterton—the doctor himself, handsome, dark-haired, maybe in his mid-twenties, but with a look of utter desperation and pain on his face as he stood in his own lab and leveled a handgun at Ed's chest—the resigned slump of the doctor's body as Al had scooped him up and carried him under one arm from the flames that were fast engulfing his clinic, knowing he'd earned himself a one-way ticket a Central prison cell.

"Arthur Newbury was Anthony Valera?" Al blinked. The Colonel had certainly never mentioned that to them, if he'd even known. "I didn't—"

"Really?" Valera looked a little startled again. "In that case, no wonder you're confused right now. You have your commander to blame for that. Of course, we, ah, _persuaded_ the press to keep the Valera name out of the Newbury case, but…" His eyes narrowed. "I'm sure the military was in an uproar over it. In fact, I _know_ they were. Frankly, I'm very surprised you and your brother never learned just who you'd caught."

Al was shaking his head. It made sense, though, that Mustang—and probably Hughes, for that matter—would try to keep Brother well out of the way of the entanglements of organized crime, to protect him, to protect them_ both_ from something so vast and deadly when they had another mission to accomplish. And he was grateful for that.

"Last I heard about your nephew, though," Al said, "he was in Central doing a life sentence. I never heard that he died."

Valera ignored that. He held up the syringe. "Do you know what this is now?"

And Al did know. "That's what he was using to kill all those people, isn't it?"

Valera nodded once, eyes focusing on the syringe with a gleam that could only be called pride. "It's brilliant, really. Completely untraceable. In a matter of weeks to a matter of days, depending on the victim's overall state of health, they start to die." He cracked a smile. "Of apparently _natural_ causes. From what I understand, it causes fever, delirium, and the eventual failure of the vital organs, over an extended period of time. And to all but perhaps a fellow bio-alchemist, the cause of death would appear to be nothing more than a sudden, unfortunate illness." He tapped the syringe lightly against his arm. "This, Alphonse, is how I've been eliminating the most dangerous of my competitors for the past year and a half now."

"Are _you_ a bio-alchemist?"

Valera shook his head. "I'm not an alchemist at all. But I have many in my employ. Dozens, who have been able to take the prototype that Anthony sent to me and replicate it."

"So he was working for you?" Al asked, suddenly feeling ill. "All those people…" Had their deaths merely been test-runs?

Valera suddenly looked thoughtful, staring down at the syringe. "Yes and no," he said. "I funded his research, and gave him the freedom to do as he pleased with it, provided he reported all of his progress back to me." He paused. "It was his dream to have a lab of his own. He was a good kid." For a moment, it seemed as though Valera had forgotten Al was there.

"Anything in particular he was researching?" Al ventured after a moment. _Aside from serial killings…_

And then Valera's head snapped up. His eyes were murderous. "Well you would know, wouldn't you," he spat, "if you and your brother hadn't burned down his lab along with all his notes and research."

tbc~


	6. Chapter 6

_"Anything in particular he was researching?" Al ventured after a moment. _Aside from serial killings…

_And then Valera's head snapped up. His eyes were murderous. "Well you would know, wouldn't you," he spat, "if you and your brother hadn't burned down his lab along with all his notes and research."_

…

"That was an accident," Al said. And it had been. It had happened so fast, he'd barely had time to register what was going on, but one minute Arthur—well, _Anthony—_had been pointing the gun at Ed, and the next Al had been diving in front of him to tackle the man to the ground, or at the very least get the gun away from him or give Ed time to get himself out of the line of fire. He'd already killed ten people, that they knew of; they weren't about to wait around to see whether or not he was the sort of man who'd shoot a fourteen-year-old point blank. Especially now that said fourteen-year-old had just effectively ruined his life. Al wasn't sure what exactly was knocked over in the ensuing chaos—either an oil lamp, or some flammable chemicals sitting on one of the work surfaces, or both, more likely—but it only took minutes before the entire room was engulfed in flame, beakers exploding, fumes igniting midair. In seconds, Ed and Al were already on their feet and making a mad dash for the stairs—the lab had been in the basement of Anthony's home—but Anthony had just sat there where Al had knocked him down, dazed, staring openmouthed at the flames around him. So Al had picked him up, giving him no choice in the matter.

But Valera didn't look like he was buying it. "An accident," he repeated. "Alright." He leaned forward. "Tell me, Alphonse, do you have _any _idea what that _accident _cost my nephew?" he hissed. "What it might very well have cost the world of modern medicine?"

"Modern medicine?" Al frowned. "What do you mean? Wasn't he just trying to develop the—" He tried, quite stupidly, to gesture at the syringe with one hand, but all it earned him was a near-blinding surge of pain. He'd discovered that he could move his hands, somewhat, as it was mainly his wrists and forearms that had been bound, leaving his hands free to flop around near his elbows. But he soon discovered that he paid for it if he didn't hold them very still. He couldn't suppress a slight grunt and wince, and grit his teeth when he saw a flicker of amusement in Valera's eye. He inclined his head toward the syringe instead, and ground out, "Wasn't he just developing his poisons down there?"

Valera scoffed, but his expression darkened. "Hah. No. Anthony was never cut out for that sort of thing. That he developed _this _was just a fortunate accident. I did say _second _greatest accomplishment, remember? And I doubt the bleeding heart kid would've even told me about it, if his brother hadn't told me first."

"His brother?" Al straightened up a bit at that. Another enemy to contend with, maybe?

"His _late _brother," Valera corrected, every syllable sharp as glass as his eyes bored into Al. "Colin Valera. My former heir."

Al gulped. "How did he die?" And what exactly did he mean, his _heir_? To the corporation or to the syndicate, or both?

Valera steepled his fingers. "Well suffice it to say that Anthony's only half the reason you're here right now, Alphonse. Colin died because Anthony died. All thanks to you, and _your _brother."

_Colin Valera, Colin Valera… _Now that _was _a name Al had heard before, somewhere... In the papers, maybe. He couldn't remember.

"You still haven't explained how Ed and I are responsible for Anthony's death," Al said, shaking his head. "Or what was so important that was in the lab. And as long as I'm your prisoner, I'd like to know what my crime was."

Valera scowled. "Very well." He twirled the syringe between a skinny thumb and forefinger. "Do you have the slightest inkling of what this little tube contains? Aside from the poison, I mean. Chemically, _this_," he brandished the syringe, "is damn near miraculous. Combine the key ingredients in a slightly different way, and add one or two extra chemicals, and do you know what this does?"

"Kills en masse?" As good a guess as any.

"Quite the contrary." He lifted it to his eyes once more, swirled the contents around a bit. "It has the power to lift a death sentence."

"Like a Philosopher's Stone?" It came out with a slight yawn—despite himself, Al felt exhaustion tugging at his mind and his eyelids, the same that had prevented him from carrying on any conversations of reasonable length during his stint in the hospital. He wished that the man would stop being so evasive. He doubted that he'd take kindly to it if Al fell asleep in the middle of their conversation.

"Nothing so archaic as that," Valera said, apparently not noticing the yawn. "But a _cure_. You see, Anthony's goal was to discover a cure to a very specific disease, a disease of the blood, that unfortunately runs in the family." His mouth pressed into a grim line. "Anthony was diagnosed with the disease himself at the age of twenty-two."

Al opened his mouth, closed it again.

_Oh. _

"Is that how he—"

"Of course that's how he died," Valera snapped. "You think that a federal prison gives a damn about the state of health of the inmates that are sentenced to life without parole?" He was rolling the syringe in his fingers again, but his hands shook, his voice heavy and low with barely-suppressed fury as he stared at it. "The costs of his medicine by that point were exorbitant, far beyond what the state was willing to cover. The money was no object for us, of course, and Colin offered to get them to him when he went to visit, but he was beyond help by that point. He died a month and a half into his sentence."

After a brief, stunned silence, Al finally found his voice. "We didn't know," he said, quietly. Because crimes notwithstanding, the idea of anybody wasting away alone from a long-term illness in a jail cell made him nauseous. And Valera was right about one thing—without knowing it, Ed and Al had condemned Anthony to just that.

"Oh, you didn't?" There was a deeply unsettling edge of sarcasm to the man's voice.

"No. I swear we didn't." And then something occurred to him. Anthony certainly hadn't _looked _like a man six weeks away from his deathbed, and certainly not like somebody who'd been fighting a losing battle against a fatal disease for the past few years. Maybe a little overtired and thin, sure, but that wasn't exactly an uncommon appearance among zealous alchemists.

"Well maybe that was because he was doing just _fine _until you two pulled the rug out from under him," Valera said. The glare he fixed him with reminded Al of a viper, poised to strike. "That lab was his salvation. It was the reason I funded it in the first place. He seemed so sure there was something to all of those theories of his—"another jab of the syringe in Al's direction—"and it turns out he was right."

"So you gave him the lab so he could find a cure for himself?" Al found himself staring at the syringe now. He was concerned, to say the least, that Valera had brought it with him into the cell.

"Well that was the way that I viewed it, of course," he said. "The immense benefit of some of his _other_ findings was unexpected at the time. And it was actually Colin who approached me with the idea in the first place, and he was begging on behalf of Anthony's life." A faint smirk tugged at the corner of Valera's thin mouth. "You know, it's funny. Colin was perfect. Everything I could've wanted in an heir and more. I had no children of my own, and despite what Vivian may think, this is no kind of life for a girl like her, so I wasn't about to foist it on her, no matter how badly she wanted it. She'd be killed in her sleep within a week."

"Are Vivian and Marie Colin and Anthony's sisters?"

"Cousins," Valera corrected. "Viv and Maria are the daughters of my older brother, heaven rest his soul, and Colin and Anthony were the sons of my younger brother, may he rot in hell." His eyes were distant. "The four of 'em were practically raised like siblings. And that's why Viv doesn't like you very much, Alphonse."

Yes, that would explain a lot.

"Colin, though…" He shook his head, a little rueful smile on his face. "A cold little bastard from the day he was born. Perfect for my purposes. Heartless. But charming. A smooth talker, and a damned good liar. And he loved the life. Can't tell you what an asset he was to me. Barely even had to show him the ropes, kid was a natural." He snorted softly. "And his little brother was everything he wasn't. And that was alright by me. Bleeding hearts don't make it far in this business, and I wasn't about to force a round peg into a square hole when I already had my right-hand man picked out." Another flick of the syringe. "And I knew he had his own set of talents that might prove beneficial down the road, even if he wanted no part in it."

Al frowned a little. The memory of the man who had pointed a gun at Ed didn't exactly do much to convince him of said "bleeding heart" tendencies.

Valera chuckled. The sound was devoid of humor, almost desperate. "You know something, Alphonse? Between you and me, I don't think Colin ever gave a damn about another living being in his life, I mean _really _gave a damn, until the day Anthony got sick." He leaned back a bit in the chair, eyes shuttering. "I suppose I should have taken that as a warning."

"What do you mean?" Al asked, uneasily. Then, "How did he die?"

Valera's eyes opened once more, eyes tracing the cracks on the ceiling. "Surely you heard about that one in the papers. Even our best efforts couldn't keep it from making front-page headlines." He held up his hands, as if spreading the words out above his head. "'_Nephew of Peter Valera found dead in hotel room in Central City. Circumstances of death unknown.' _Thankfully, we were able to keep those _mysterious circumstances_ just that—a mystery. Didn't want the whole country reading all about how Colin visited Anthony on the day he died, went back to his hotel room, and ate the muzzle of his own gun, now did I?"

Al gulped. "He—"

"I'm sure the hotel staff had a delightful time getting bits of his brain out of the upholstery," Valera cut him off, still watching the ceiling.

A silence. Then, "Oh."

Valera barked a laugh—it was a harsh, dry sound, somewhere between a laugh and a cough. "Oh?" he echoed. "These boys were like sons to me, Alphonse. And one of them was the future of the Valera name. Both taken from me. And all you can say is 'oh.'"

Al switched tactics. He had to keep Valera talking—getting the man to talk himself out of pinning the blame on him and Ed might be a shot in the dark, but it was the only shot he had left. And his energy was flagging too much to provide a sufficient defense of his case, so he had to think of what the right questions to ask were here, and use them to his advantage. Failing that, it might at least wear Valera out and get him to leave. Give him more time to think. …And sleep.

Al met his gaze levelly. "So this…cure. How did Anthony develop it?"

Valera's lips twisted into a sort of bemused, condescending smirk. Al got the distinct feeling that the man knew exactly what he was doing, and was willing to play along, not detecting it as a threat. Al resisted an urge to shiver. Well at least the bastard liked to hear himself talk. "Anthony was a med student in his last semester when he received the diagnosis. A good student, too. Not a prodigy like you, but well on his way to getting exactly what he wanted, and what we were gonna let him have for his own good, and that was an _out_ from the business. One of the med professors at Betterton University's a bio-alchemist himself, and offered some classes as well as an apprenticeship." He shrugged. "Never would have pinned someone like Anthony as an alchemist back then, considering the, ah, moral flexibility involved with the whole practice, but he took a liking to the professor, and he saw all these ways he could integrate it into practicing medicine. Filled his head with all kinds of ideas. Now when I had Colin reporting back to me once a week after he'd visit him in Crystal Ford, he told me that the kid's notebooks would all be filled up with the most extraordinary things…lucky for me, that's how I found this beauty." It was a wonder that the man didn't break or depress the syringe by accident, considering how much he was waving it around, and no matter that the needle had some kind of rubber coating.

"Wait…" He bit back a yawn. _Urgh. Stay…awake…_ "Colin cared so much that he shot himself the day Anthony died, but he had absolutely no problem spying on him and handing over secrets he knew you'd abuse?"

Valera scoffed. "Well why not? Anthony wasn't naïve; of course he knew what Colin was doing there every weekend without fail making him take his medicine when they'd spent their entire lives not seeing eye to eye on, well, anything. And obviously Anthony was gonna give Colin leeway to follow my orders, especially seeing as the whole clinic and lab setup, his dream come true for three years, was Colin's idea in the first place."

"So the big change of heart happened after the diagnosis."

Valera opened his mouth to respond, but his words were forestalled by an abrupt coughing fit. They made a dry, hacking sound, and he pounded a bit on his own chest, hunched over on himself for a few seconds, before he was able to speak again. "It's the blasted damp in here," he rasped, eyes watering, before leaning back in the chair once more. "Anthony was every bit as surprised by it as I was, believe me. As far as I could tell, Colin never even gave a damn about his own mother, and much less Anthony, or so I thought."

"He gave a damn about you, didn't he?"

Valera smiled ruefully. "He respected me. Believe me, there's a difference. He was my best employee." He shook his head. "But even an old hardass like me knows that unless you're some kind of sociopath, which Colin _wasn't, _you can't go through life without giving a damn about _somebody. _I think it just took that diagnosis for him to realize that that somebody was his brother. Guess he always assumed Anthony would be safely out of the way when it came to the business, like he was once less annoyance to be dealt with, but in the back of his mind maybe he thought Anthony'd be protected that way." He sighed, and it struck Al how _old _he looked. "You can see how the disease would come as a nasty surprise."

"But Colin was still willing to spy on him?"

"Like I said, it was a condition I set. In the process, though, Colin arranged it so that in the span of a few years Anthony could have the life he always wanted." He glared at the floor. "More or less."

"He was sick," Al guessed.

"Yeah," Valera said. "Only visited him out there once myself, but the first year and a half were terrible for him. Had to hire a live-in housekeeper to look after him and make sure he didn't die in his sleep, he was so sick all the time. And of course, a backwoods clinic probably wasn't what he'd had in mind when he was in school, either. With his name and his connections through that professor of his, he had job offers up to his ears from every cutting-edge alchemic research facility in the country. But if he wanted the freedom and the means at his disposal to find a way to save himself, he needed some way to skirt around the red tape that's involved in joints like that, because he didn't have the time for it."

"So that's where the assumed name and the private practice came in, right?"

"I think he came to like that part of it." Valera looked thoughtful. "There was another doctor or two in town already, so he wasn't overrun when he was too ill to work, and he had ample time for his experiments. But he liked to help people." He chuckled, and Al almost thought by the dry, wheezy sound of it that it would start him in on another coughing fit. "I told his mother it was like he was an embarrassment to the family, _helping_ people…"

"And the cure?" Al pressed.

Valera's eyes narrowed a bit—he could tell Al couldn't care less about the reminiscing. "He discovered the formula just after that first year and a half," he snapped. "And just in time, because based on the things Colin had been telling me about his condition, I'd begun to make funeral arrangements."

"But it wasn't a cure, was it?" Al shook his head slowly. "Not if he had to keep taking it."

"He did have to inject himself with the stuff every morning to keep the disease at bay, I'll grant you that," Valera said, "But it _worked_. Brilliantly. Did he look sick to you?"

And _now _Al finally had some ammunition. "Mr. Valera," he said, carefully, "If Anthony developed that formula with alchemy, then he knew the inherent rules, even if he chose to ignore them. All that formula was doing was prolonging the inevitable."

"See, that's where I think you're wrong, Alphonse," Valera said. His eyes glinted in the harsh lights overhead. "You're forgetting that his work was a fusion of alchemic theory and _medicine. _Of course he knew that shooting himself up every day was a quick fix. He wouldn't have stopped there, no matter how desperate he was. And the last report that Colin ever gave to me, before you arrested him? He told me that Anthony had been up all night in the lab for two days straight, and that he didn't understand half of what Anthony was telling him, but you know what Colin said to me, Alphonse? He said, _he did it. I think he finally did it._" He leaned in. "And all the notes he made, and the prototypes he developed for the formula that would have saved his life and who knows how many others, you _burned_."

Al nearly flinched at the look Valera was giving him. He gulped, and then said, in a voice that sounded rather less brave than he'd hoped, "But the poisonings, Mr. Valera. Even if it hadn't been Ed and me who were sent out to investigate, somebody else would've been. There are more investigators and more alchemists, including bio-alchemists, with far more years of experience than us at the military's disposal. And with all due respect, he was murdering, and he wasn't doing enough to cover his tracks. We're not bio-alchemists and we put two and two together—"

And then, without warning, Valera was lurching off the chair and towards in a startling show of strength for a man so apparently feeble. Before Al quite realized what was happening, the man had his hands wrapped around Al's broken and bound arms, and was lifting him off the bed and into the air by them, slamming him hard into the wall behind him. Al nearly passed out.

"You think he'd have hurt a fly unless I forced him to?" Valera hissed, his face inches from Al as Al fought not to give into the blinding pain where he was pinned to the wall. His vision was blurring at the edges. "The boy had me wrapped around his finger, and I'd never have laid a finger on anybody he cared about, but I took advantage of the fact that he didn't _know _it because the poison was too valuable a discovery. So yeah, I made some vague threats against Colin, against Maria and Vivian, against his _mother_, and it was enough. And let me tell you, it about killed him inside, so don't you _dare _presume to know a damn thing about my nephew. Am I clear?"

Al nodded tightly. Jolts of white-hot pain ricocheted up and down both arms, and he was sure he was going to be sick.

He could see Valera's jaw twitching, sweat beading on his forehead, lips still curled in a snarl of rage. Nothing about the man looked weak or sickly anymore. He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, and then Al felt himself being flung by the arms straight over his cot and landing, sprawled out on his back, head spinning, on the concrete floor. Pain exploded throughout his entire body at the impact—he didn't have anything substantial in the way of muscle and fat to cushion this kind of fall. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

When his vision cleared, he realized Valera was bending over him, dangling something in front of his eyes. It was the syringe.

"_This _I will leave in the hands of your capable nurse." He smiled. "An eye for an eye."

"N-no—" Al breathed.

"Just in time for your brother to get here, too," Valera continued, eyes frigid, "to watch _you_ rot."

…

When Marie found him, he was still on the floor, barely conscious. It was nice in a way; he felt oddly numb, detached, almost float-y, and if it wasn't for the insistent pain in his arms he could've almost been in the armor again. He thought an hour or two had gone by, but he had no way of knowing. He barely even remembered the conversation with Valera—aside from a tightness in his chest and a feeling of dread that made him want to sink into the floor and hide himself at the memory of the man's skeletal face.

When he found himself in Marie's arms, tucked against her chest and being gently lifted onto the cot, he vaguely registered that her eyes were red and puffy, and that she wouldn't look directly at him. When something wet hit his cheek, managed to nudge her weakly with the side of his head. "Wha's w-wrong?" His words were slurred, and he blinked a few times, trying to wake up.

Her eyes closed, more tears leaking out, and she pressed her quivering lips together hard. She shook her head once, and set him down on the cot. Instead of wadding her coat up for him, though, she laid him down so that his head was propped up on her thigh. Looking blearily up at her, Al could see that she had a hand pressed over her mouth like she might be sick.

And _then _he remembered.

His entire body went rigid, and he sucked in a shuddering breath.

Marie started, and looked down at him. He tried, to no avail, to wriggle away from her, but she set her hands on his shoulders as if to keep him steady.

"You're going to—y-you got sent here to—"

Something broke in her expression. "Yes," she said, he voice very small. She looked devastated.

He was shaking his head. "Why?" he managed to croak, through lips that felt oddly numb. And he knew _why_, of course he knew why, but why _her? _

Her face crumpled, but when she answered, she was finally looking him in the eyes, meeting his with her wet, wide brown ones. "Because he'll kill my children if I don't."

"Oh."

She was still looking at him, something about her expression imploring. And what did she honestly expect him to do? Grant her some kind of absolution? She was about to kill him.

"And if I don't do it," she said, her voice low and wrecked, now reaching for something that was just out of his line of vision, "Viv will." She let out a shuddering breath. "Your choice." Al could see the syringe in her hand.

His own eyes burned. _I can't die here. I can't. Not after everything Brother and I did..._ It took everything he had in him to force the next words out. "You. Not her."

She opened her mouth to answer, lips twisting into a sort of fractured smile, but all that came out was a sob. She set a hand in his hair, brushed the bangs back from his eyes.

"I never blamed you and your brother for what happened to Anthony and Colin." She shook her head. "You were doing your job, and they were doing theirs." Another sob. "And I gotta do mine." She leaned down until her forehead was touching his. "I'm so sorry," she breathed.

"I'm sorry too." He hadn't realized he was trembling until Marie slid her hand onto the back of his neck in what seemed to be a calming gesture. She pressed a kiss to his forehead, and Al squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the prick of a needle in his left arm.

**_Tbc- _**

**_And if you are suspicious about the Valera's actual power and motives at this point, then good. More to come within the next few weeks, hopefully. The next chapter's got more on Marie's story, and Ed's long-anticipated arrival…_**


	7. Chapter 7

**The Spider's Web**

**Chapter 7**

It took a few minutes, but with a thrill of terror Al realized that his whole body felt impossibly heavy, his legs jellylike, and that he couldn't stop shivering. This stuff was supposed to take weeks, wasn't it? A gradual death. Unless his body was too slight and too weak for the usual rules to apply.

He steadfastly pushed away the thought that he was going to die—refused to think of anything at all except not succumbing to the treacherous exhaustion tugging at his eyelids and slowing his breaths. He _couldn't, _not until Ed came. _If _Ed came. And while the thought of Ed being at the mercy of these people himself made him sick, he really did have no other hope of getting out of here unless Ed showed up with some sort of plan.

Not five minutes could have gone by when Marie's leg shifted under his neck. He heard a quiet sniffle, and glanced up at her. She was staring over his head in the general direction of the cell bars. "I have to go," she whispered. "Vivian…I have to show her the…" She trailed off, and Al's stomach turned. Of course, Vivian would want to see the empty syringe, probably present the thing to Valera as proof. She slid a hand beneath the back of his neck, another behind his head to gently lift him off of her.

"Is there anything I can do?" she asked, tentatively.

"Yeah," he croaked out, through a mouth that had gone very dry. "Don't leave." _You just poisoned me. The least you can do is not leave me alone in this place._

She froze, and after a long moment, let his head fall back down on her leg and slumped against the wall behind her. Her fingers found his hair again, slowly moving back and forth. It made him sleepy, but it seemed to keep her calm—or at least keep her from sobbing all over him again—so he bit the inside of his cheek and said nothing about it.

"Your brother will be here by tonight," she told him softly, after awhile. He didn't answer, but he felt his throat tighten. She peered down at him through hair that was loose and frizzy—she'd torn out the bun some time ago—an odd, sad little smile quirking at her lips. "You look so much like him," she said, tracing a finger along one of his cheekbones. "I noticed at the hospital. If you were well, you could be twins." A peculiar shadow flickered across her face.

He tasted blood on his tongue—he must've bitten his cheek too hard. He did his best to gulp it down through a throat that felt as cold and leaden as the rest of him, and asked, "Why did you go north?"

She smiled ruefully down at him. "Would _you_ stay here?"

"No."

She was silent for a long time, and Al thought she wasn't going to get any better answer. "Fell in love with the wrong person." Her voice was barely audible, with a note of self-derision. "Some kind of terrible cliché, really."

"And you got pregnant?" he asked. It was blunt, and probably rude, but at this point, he couldn't bring himself to care.

But she just nodded. "Yes. With Lissie and…Anthony."

"Twins?"

Another nod. "Nearly eighteen months old now."

"And you didn't want the father to find out about them."

She snorted. Her fingers fell still in his hair. "I was so naïve. Stupid. I mean, Vivian slept around with the opposition all the time. Still does, I'm sure of it. It should've occurred to me that it _mattered _that Malcolm's father was a major investor."

"Why didn't you use an assumed name when you left?" he asked, tiredly. The cold had settled into his chest now; he wished Marie would throw the blanket over him.

"Uncle wouldn't hear of it," she said, a touch of anger coloring her voice. "It was like my name was some kind of ammunition against me. To remind me who was in charge." She ran a hand across her face. "The intent was to have me living in fear. I was terrified, every day, that either Malcolm's family would find my children, or that Uncle would use them as leverage for…something like this." She had tears in her eyes again, but beyond the sadness he saw a deep, smoldering fury there. And for the first time, Al saw the family resemblance between Peter Valera and his niece.

"You know what the worst part of this is?" she asked, voice low and shaking. "Despite what Uncle would like you to believe, this was never about you and your brother. Not really. You were just easy targets, and I was easily manipulated."

The cold in his chest tightened its grip. "What?"

She swiped at her eyes in an almost frustrated way. "Peter Valera is a petty man. And a ruined one. That's a deadly combination."

"What do you mean?" Al asked, slowly.

She looked down at him for a long moment, then shook her head. "It doesn't matter. You should rest." Her fingers resumed the soothing motion in his hair, and it was suddenly quite hard to think again.

"Will I wake up?"

She bit her lip, and hesitated just long enough for dread to worm its way into his gut.

"The point of this was never to kill you before Edward arrived. It was…" she trailed off, and her shoulders slumped.

"It was for him to watch me die?"

"That was the idea, yes," she said, her voice subdued.

Al let out a breath, tried to calm himself. "How long…" he let the question hang, not sure he had it in him to finish it.

"I…don't know," she said, sliding two fingers to the side of his neck as if to check his pulse. "From what I understand under normal circumstances, it takes a couple weeks. But for you…" She sighed. "You were getting better, but you're not…"

"Healthy?"

"…So I honestly couldn't say," she finished, helplessly. "I'm sorry."

His heart sank. "Is there an antidote?"

"Not that I know of." The back of her hand was on his forehead, ad he thought she was checking his temperature. It was warm, and it felt good on his freezing skin. "If there was one, only Anthony would've known it."

He nodded tacitly. His vision blurred.

"Go to sleep, Alphonse," he heard her whisper.

"Can't," he whispered back, through teeth he distantly realized were chattering.

"Why?"

"Cold." Because this was the true danger here, what Marie didn't see or understand—the ice that was slowly devouring every vein in his body, black ice that was going to steal his breath long before Ed got here.

She frowned, and flipped her hand so that her palm rested on his forehead. "You're not cold." There was a little crease between her eyebrows. "Actually, I'm worried that you're already running a temperature…"

"'M cold," he insisted.

Marie looked torn. "If I put a blanket over you, you're just gonna feel worse when you wake up."

"Please."

She said nothing for a moment, thumb skimming along his jawbone again. "Okay," she mouthed, eventually. Something about the pity in her eyes drove a spike of panic hard into his chest, but when the blanket fell over his body, heavy and blessedly warm, his own eyes fell shut and did not open again.

…

Syndicates were full of douchebags.

Ed growled low in his throat as the big guy on his right, some thug that the others were calling Silas, dragged him forward with a crushing grip on his bicep, apparently not satisfied with his pace. He bit back a hiss where the man's enormous thumb pressed into the wound where his arm had been pinned by rebar on the Promised Day. He dragged his heels, just to spite the guy, but that only earned a tighter grip that probably busted a stitch or two, and the other one—a smaller, stockier, but still formidable guy called Michael—yanking his other arm forward.

It wasn't as though he didn't want to reach the destination in question here, though—these clowns were taking him to Al no matter what he did. And, he knew with a horrible certainty that made all his insides tangle themselves into impossible knots, Valera had done something to Al. Something that he wanted Ed to see for himself. He hadn't said what it was that he'd done, but the second he'd started going on about "just desserts" for the deaths of his nephews, which he'd already explained in gratuitous detail while Michael and Silas had pinned Ed to a chair, Ed's heart had begun to race. He had a feeling—and hoped with every fiber of his being that he was wrong—that he knew what constituted as just desserts in Valera's mind.

This place wasn't big, but what was distinctly unnerving about it was that everything about it seemed to be hiding in plain sight. The abandoned police station in the seedy part of town had seemed such a terribly predictable location, but there wasn't another soul in sight on the streets when he'd shown up. Surely there were more people here than just Silas, Michael, Vivian, Valera, Al, and the nurse Marie, but if there were, Ed didn't know where. Unless they were that confident that Ed and Al posed so little a threat to them.

_And why not, _whispered a traitorous voice in the back of his mind, _when everybody in Amestris knows that the Valeras rule Betterton. _

At some point, Ed saw that they were in some sort of round antechamber, brick and windowless like every other damn room he'd seen in this place, from which a series of yawning black caverns of hallways opened off. He found himself being dragged towards a section of wall on which a long switch plate was mounted.

It was Michael who stepped forward, dragging Ed's right arm along with him. He let go of it with one hand so that he could reach for the switches. But even if Ed had thought he'd stand half a chance of finding Al on his own and busting out of this place he still wouldn't have been able to resist Michael's single-handed grip, as thin and atrophied as his right arm was.

And Al's whole body was like that, so whatever these people were doing to him, he couldn't take much of it. Ed shoved that thought down and gritted his teeth.

"Number four, was it…?" Michael was muttering, reaching for the corresponding switch.

And with an electric hum and cackle, one of the hallways to their left lit up, a fluorescent glow on dark brick illuminating a double row of what appeared to be holding cells.

He felt his pulse quicken at the sight. Al was here, if he was anywhere.

He shot a glare up at Michael, who seemed to be counting off the numbers of each small, dilapidated cell that they passed, mumbling under his breath as he went. They were all pretty much the same—bare cot, toilet, and a thick coating of dust, with narrow-set steel bars in front and solid brick running between and behind it all.

"Are you taking me to Al?" he asked. Because if they changed their minds, decided to stick him in another one of these moldy old cells while they let Al alone to starve or freeze to death or he didn't want to think what else in another, then so help him, he'd—

"Hey," he snapped, when Michael ignored him. He angled a slight kick with his left leg at the man's knee—not enough to do any damage, but enough to gain his attention, and annoyance. Whatever Valera's reasons were for not having taken his leg away in order to incapacitate him he didn't know, but he wasn't complaining.

Michael spared him a glance now—more of a full-out scowl than a glance, really. "That was the plan, yeah," he said, through his teeth, and Ed smirked. Good. So it _had _hurt.

At the same time, relief had washed over him. Whatever else happened, at least step one wouldn't be locating one another. They would figure this out.

But it was a relief tinged with trepidation. How many cells away were they now? They'd nearly reached the end of the hall, three sets of footsteps echoing too sharply off the walls and ceiling. The sound reverberated through his sore head—he'd taken more than one punch to the face during the course of his little chat with Valera, when he'd been feeling less than genial towards the man. He had a split lip and a potentially broken nose, and his skull felt like it was full of angry buzzing insects.

It was two cells down from the end of the hall, on the left, when Michael and Silas both stopped, abruptly, just before he was at the proper angle to see what, or who, was on the other side of the bars. Michael wore a vindictive grin. "Here ya are," he said, jerking his head towards the bars. "Home sweet home, punk."

Silas looked indifferent, bored even, as he reached for both Ed's arms, holding him fast while Michael reached into the pocket of his jacket for a key. Ed still couldn't see into the cell, as much as he fought Silas to take a step forward or stand on his toes to get a glance, but seconds later, the door was swinging open, and he was being shoved inside.

He came down hard on his knees, and he heard the door slam behind him.

At the same time, from in front of him, there was a sharp gasp.

He looked up. Sitting ramrod straight on the cot, her eyes round and wide and her back pressed hard against the brick behind her like she'd heard them coming and had wanted nothing more than to disappear into the wall, was the woman that he knew to be Marie Valera.

"Your sister'll be by later, 'cause she ain't exactly thrilled that you haven't been to see her yet," came Michael's voice from behind them, and Marie started, one hand flying from where it had been scrabbling against the wall and coming to rest on the side of the pale, thin face that was propped against her leg. Its brows knit a bit at the contact, but its eyes remained closed, too-dark shadows smudged beneath them.

And then Ed was off the ground, lurching forward.

"_Al_!"


	8. Chapter 8

The Spider's Web

Chapter 8

Marie watched, her breath caught in her throat, as Edward Elric's fingers closed and tightened around the empty syringe. She didn't know what had possessed her to hand it over to him, but an empty syringe could be lethal in more ways than one, and she'd just given his brother a death sentence. At the moment, she couldn't see his eyes for the hair that was hanging loose in his face, so who knew if he wanted to kill her or not.

Well it had been easier to just give it to him than offer any sort of explanation, at any rate. She knew Uncle would have told him all about Anthony and Colin by now, and that he could put two and two together about the poison from there. When he'd been tossed into the cell, his face bruised and his hair down and tangled around his shoulders, dressed in some baggy old uniform of dark denim that must've come from one of the prison supply closets, his eyes had been positively murderous. It had made her hair stand on end.

That is, until those eyes found Alphonse. Something fractured in his gaze then. And within seconds, Edward was on his knees next to the cot, taking Alphonse by the shoulders and repeating his name over and over, voice growing louder and splintered by panic when Alphonse didn't open his eyes.

Every one of those desperate "Al? _Al!_"'s had cut through Marie like a knife. Well if he was going to kill her, she thought now, watching his fingers clenched around the syringe, she probably deserved it. Hell, it could be for the best. She didn't know if she could live with herself otherwise, even with Lissie and Anthony in the equation. And even then, she could name about five other families in her apartment building alone who would be happy to take them in, who would love them, who would keep them _safe _from all this when she was gone.

In his sleep, Alphonse's brow furrowed, and she could feel his thin shoulders shuddering in spite of the mounting fever coloring his cheeks with splotches of red. She bit her lip—_I did this, I did this—_and set a hand gently in his hair, moving her fingers in slow circles. It helped Lissie and Anthony sleep at night, and it was a habit she'd continued while working shifts in the pediatric ward. And though Alphonse wasn't exactly a child—_yes, he is, he's half my age and so weak already, and I murdered him—_it seemed to calm him just as well.

The motion caught Edward's attention; his head snapped up. Marie froze, but even as she watched, the unbridled rage that had filled his eyes when he'd been locked into the cell drained away to nothing. He was looking from the syringe to Alphonse and back again, as if he'd momentarily forgotten that Marie was even there. And he had that _look _on his face, that devastating look she'd observed more than once, back at the hospital.

Marie had been juggling a few different patients at the time, but even before Vivian had called with the hostage order, Alphonse had required the most round-the-clock attention. She had never figured out what had actually happened to him that had ravaged his body so completely, except that it was somehow linked to alchemy, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. She wanted no part in it, whatever force it was that could make somebody look like a prisoner of war, who was in Alphonse's case literally wasting away to nothing, instead of young and strong like Edward was, like Alphonse had every right to be.

But one look at Edward, even two weeks ago, was enough to tell her that as much all this disturbed her, it had absolutely nothing on how Edward was being affected by whatever had done this to his brother. Despite his best efforts, the boy had no poker face whatsoever—for both him and Alphonse, it was all in the eyes, big and overly expressive, and as good as a death warrant if they'd been born into one of the syndicate families. But Marie saw it all—the way he'd watched Alphonse while he was asleep, the look on his face suggesting that the too-small body might spontaneously splinter and crack into a thousand pieces if he looked away for a moment. The anxiety—and inexplicable guilt—that flashed in his eyes before he could clamp down on it, when they'd weighed Alphonse for the first time, when the results of his first blood test came back less than stellar, when the readings on the vitals monitors bespoke weakened organs.

A smirk and a smartass comment later that earned a smile or a mild reproach from Alphonse, and he'd be seemingly just fine again, the same obnoxious punk that seemed to have no concept of the term "visiting hours." But Marie knew the motive, if not the specific reasons, behind her finding Edward asleep in a chair half-slumped over Alphonse's bed during every night shift, when he had his own room, his own bed, and not to mention his own injuries. Once, she'd swallowed back a hard lump in her throat and nearly had to leave the room altogether at the sight—Edward with his face stuck to the sheets and snoring softly, and Alphonse asleep against the propped end of the bed, looking content but too still, his face nearly as white as his pillow. She wondered if it had looked anything like this the day Anthony had died.

Watching Edward's face now as he looked down at Alphonse was like some kind of horrible slideshow. Fear, disbelief, and horror chased each other across his features, settling at last on a look of such utter devastation in those too-wide eyes that it made Marie's chest ache to witness.

It wasn't until a very long moment had gone by that she realized he'd spoken.

"What?" she asked, blankly. He was looking at her now.

"I said, they coerced you, didn't they?"

Marie blinked. There was no hatred in his voice, no blame. But the question was very quiet.

"Yes." She nodded, too quickly perhaps. "I never would've—"

"Yeah, I didn't think so."

She felt a bit of the tension go out of her shoulders at that—at least he _knew_—but _how_ did he know?

He must've seen the question in her eyes, because he looked pointedly from her face to her hand to where it rested on Alphonse's head and back again. "'Cause I seriously doubt you'd be risking your neck to stay in here and take care of him while your family sits around wondering where your real sympathies lie otherwise, would you?"

She just stared at him. And suddenly she thought that this might all somehow be easier to bear if he _did _hate her for it. It was bad enough that Alphonse didn't seem to, that he'd really never stopped being kind to her until the moment he'd passed out.

"But you think you're already dead no matter what you do, don't you?" he asked her, slowly. His eyes were haunted, fixated on the slow rise and fall of his brother's chest.

"I don't know," she whispered. She'd had the foresight to leave a note with old Mrs. Dale, the neighbor, that had insinuated a possibility that long term plans for Lissie and Anthony might have to be made, in case she wouldn't be returning to Central. But the thought of never seeing them again left her dizzy and tight-chested with panic. Even if that was selfish, and that it might be better this way—there was a chance that in her death all her children's ties with the Valera name could be cut. Because God knew Uncle wouldn't last much longer, and when _he _was gone, what could Viv or Malcolm do?

She was so preoccupied by those words that she hardly noticed until she felt Alphonse's head shift a bit that Edward was kneeling by the bed again. She saw him wince when he touched the side of Alphonse's neck, and she knew without a doubt that he could feel two things there—a high temperature and a thready pulse.

Without looking up, he asked, in a way that pretty much confirmed that he already knew the answer, "Is there an antidote?"

And she was about to make herself do it. To tell him that it was hopeless, that engineered poisons had to have engineered antidotes, that they were two separate matters altogether from what little she knew on the subject, and that alchemy would only complicate the whole thing. That if by some miracle one of Uncle's alchemists actually _had _managed a stroke of brilliance to rival Anthony and had discovered an actual, stable, reliable antidote in such a short time, Edward would have to find the research lab (if it was even in Betterton), single-handedly take down however many alchemists were protecting it, alchemists and hired hands that wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through his head if he even got within a few blocks of the place. The Valera influence may have waned in Central, but Betterton was still theirs, and Edward's time would be far better spent by Alphonse's side for however long he had left.

But she never had to say any of it, because a second later, Alphonse's eyes had fluttered halfway open, into a vague, glassy stare that was directed at neither of them.

"Al?" Edward's voice was somewhere between ecstatic and frantic, and there was a bit of a hitch to it.

Alphonse blinked once, twice, and muttered what sounded like a halting "H-huh?" When his eyes failed to focus, Edward leaned in closer until their foreheads were nearly touching.

"Al," he repeated, slower, louder. "Need you to wake up for me now, got it?"

Alphonse made another small, unintelligible noise, his forehead creasing as his shuttered eyes finally zoned in on Edward's face.

"That's good, Al." Something about the subdued tone of Edward's voice made Marie's vision blur. "That's really good. Just keep your eyes open, okay?"

And at that, Alphonse's eyes finally did open all the way. Marie felt him give a little start against her, heard a sharp intake of breath, and she could tell by the shift in his expression—the widening of his eyes and his thin, bluish lips falling open—that he'd fully woken up, and realized at least to some degree just what was going on. "Brother!" His voice was small and creaky but it was clear that he was somewhere between relieved at the sight of Edward and very alarmed.

And it probably didn't help matters that Edward looked a little worse for wear, either. It was clear that he'd been on the receiving end of a decent beating—courtesy of Michael and Silas, she was sure—judging by the dried blood under his swollen nose and his busted lip.

"Yeah." Edward managed a smile. "Hey there, lazy bones, have a good nap?"

Alphonse just blinked again, concern clearly winning out over relief as the crease in his forehead deepened. His eyes scanned Edward's face, and Marie guessed he was taking in the injuries.  
"Well, I hope it was a good nap," Edward went on, as though he didn't notice, "'cause you're not getting any more shuteye until we figure out how to bust outta this dump, alright?"

Alphonse hesitated, but he nodded. At the same time, Marie found herself saying, "You can't."

She didn't mean it to be cruel—she just didn't want them to make this any harder on themselves than it was already going to be—but for the first time, anger flared hot in Edward's eyes as he looked at her. She bit back a gulp.

"And why not?" His voice wasn't loud, but something about it warned her that if she valued her well-being, she'd choose her words carefully. "You come and go, don't you? It's not like there aren't doors in this place."

"Ed," Alphonse said, quietly. His eyes were starting to droop half-shut again, but his gaze was focused on Marie now. "I think she's just t-telling us not t'do anything stupid." He broke off with a yawn.

_No, I'm telling you not to do anything at all if you have any sense of self-preservation whatsoever, _she thought, looking down at those stark, awful circles of purple and gray that ringed the bottoms of Alphonse's eyes. _Don't make it worse._

_I did this I did this I did—_

"I'm gonna get you outta here, Al," Edward was saying. He was messing with the edge of the blanket pulled up around Alphonse's neck, clearly unsure as Marie herself had been whether she wanted to tuck it around him against his conspicuous shivering or uncover him to combat the fever. She hoped he didn't uncover him just now—he hadn't seen what Vivian had done to Alphonse's arms yet, and she didn't think it would be particularly good for his state of mind at the moment.

Alphonse watched him, a weak grin tugging at his lips at Edward's obvious indecision, before he let his eyes fall shut. "I believe you." A second later, one eye cracked back open. "'Cause I'm gonna get you out of here, too."

Tbc~


	9. Chapter 9

**_The Spider's Web_**

**_Chapter 9_**

_**AN: This chapter is more of a short interlude than anything else- giving Ed and Al a moment of peace before all hell breaks loose….and before I bring Vivian back in to meddle with things…**_

At some point—Al didn't really register when—Marie's knee was replaced by Ed's underneath his head, and something wet and cold was placed over his eyes. He tried to protest, because the cold of it drove dull spikes of pain into his skull, but he found that his mouth wouldn't quite obey his brain. He settled eventually for shaking his head minutely from side to side, at the very least to get Ed's attention if not to knock the thing loose.

A heavy hand fell over his eyes, and his vision went pitch-black. "Leave it," came Ed's voice, gentle, but his hand didn't budge.

Al couldn't muster the energy to argue, and just laid there, dumbly, dazed and freezing, but glad that Ed was there in any case.

But…

Something wasn't quite right here. Well, _that _was a near-absurd understatement, but aside from everything else that was quite obviously and dreadfully _wrong _right now, there was _something_—

And then it hit him. He might not be able to see the room, but it was completely silent in here.

And why was it suddenly Ed he was using as an impromptu pillow, and not—

He made some sort of questioning sound—he didn't think his tongue was quite coordinated enough at the moment to actually say her name, but Ed must've understood, because he said, "Marie's fine."

"W-where—" he finally managed.

"Well her sister and her uncle didn't get their hands on her yet, if that's what you mean." There was a low, vicious edge to his voice. And suddenly Al was quite sure that it wasn't any ill treatment of _Marie_ that had put that fury there.

_Marie's not the one dying here, you are…_

_….Don't think about it…._

He gulped.

_Do NOT think about it. Not right now. Not until we've made it out of here._

But why was it so damned hard to be brave about this? Maybe because he knew it was coming. Knew how weak he was. Could already _feel _it coming.

But Ed's voice interrupted these thoughts

"She went to try and find something for your arms," he said, flatly.

Al winced. So Ed had seen them, then.

"They've started to swell pretty badly against the ropes, and she doesn't want them to cut off your circulation." Al felt the edge of the blanket being lifted off his chest. "Bastards," Ed muttered under his breath. "I wouldn't have thought that there'd be enough of your arms _to_ swell, but apparently I underestimate their ability to tie knots." That fury had return to his voice full-tilt.

"Can't feel it," Al offered, weakly, but Ed huffed.

"That's _not_ a good thing, Al. You could lose your arms. And believe me, we don't wanna add double automail surgery to your laundry list. Winry would kill you." There was a weak sort of a smile in his voice at that, but Al wasn't sure whether if he wanted to laugh or cry.

"I asked her to forget about the swelling and just find something to cut the bonds," he continued, letting the blanket fall back onto Al's chest, "But she's still convinced we're gonna die here no matter what we do, and that they'd just retie it if they caught us and maybe add a few extra fractures in there for good measure, so she wouldn't do it."

"They'd hurt her," Al pointed out, gritting his teeth as the sound of his own voice made his head throb. "If they thought t-that she was gonna t-try t'help us escape…"

"I know they would." Ed sighed. "Which is why I didn't argue with her when she said she couldn't."

"And I take it that t-there's nothing in the room," he guessed. The place was bare as a bone, and he didn't need to be on his feet and looking around to be pretty certain of that fact.

"I tore the place apart while you were sleeping, believe me. Nothing," Ed's voice was something akin to a frustrated growl. "Of course I had stuff hidden on me when I showed up here. Knives, a lock pick even. But they weren't stupid enough not to strip-search me first thing when I arrived." He made a derisive sound. "Can't say they're not thorough, though. They were convinced I had stuff hidden inside my braid."

Aha, so _that's _why his hair was down. Al couldn't help but smile faintly at that. "Well did you?"

Ed sounded distinctly pissed off now. "Well _yeah_, but it's still damned inconvenient for us…"

Al chuckled.

"Don't see what's so funny," Ed groused. Al could feel his fingers messing restlessly with the hem of the blanket. "If we don't get your arms free—"

"We have no alchemy," Al finished, smile fading.

"…Yeah," Ed agreed, quietly. "And unless you can think of a decent Plan B, we're gonna need that."

And Al certainly didn't have a Plan B. Locked up in a place of unknown size and layout surrounded by an unknown enemy, their only shot at scape was freeing himself to use alchemy—a force to help break down walls, create doors, and dodge bullets. He wasn't a hundred percent sure it would still work for him with both of his arms broken as badly as they were, but if he had to force it, he would.

"If I hadn't switched to Northern, I couldn't popped open the hatch and taken a gear or something outta my leg for us to use, but it's screwed shut on this model, so no dice." Ed tapped the foot of the leg in question against the ground, hard. "Probably why they let me keep it instead of detaching it as soon as I got here."

"Well don't talk too loud," Al said. "Don't give them any ideas. Besides," he said, with a yawn as the drug tugged at his consciousness once more, "If you took your leg apart, how'd we be able t'get outta here?"

"I'd put it back together." There was a bit of sulk in Ed's voice.

"There's a reason Winry never lets you mess with it yourself, Brother." Of its own accord, his head began to slump sideways on Ed's knee.

"Al?" There was a note of panic in his voice now, and Al felt a gentle pressure on his cheek, as if Ed was trying to push his head back upright.

"'M'okay," Al slurred. "Jus' tired." That awful cold numbness hadn't gone away, but it was more distant now, and he wasn't so petrified that he wouldn't wake up this time. After all, he _had _to—he wasn't about to die in Ed's arms and leave him at the mercy of these people without his only shot at escaping. So _not _waking up was out of the question.

…But then again, at the moment, so was staying awake.

Ed lifted the cloth off of his eyes then. Al blinked against the sudden assault of the light on his eyes, but when his vision cleared, he could see Ed holding the cloth up in his hands—it seemed to be a bit of the bed sheet that he and Marie must've torn off and wet in the old sink—and, well, Al really wasn't sure what Ed was trying to do with the thing. Scrunching it up, wringing it out though no water fell from it, and re-folding it again, all while frowning and squinting at it as if in deep concentration.

Al watched him, eyes growing heavier, and not liking one bit how pale and utterly exhausted Ed looked. He wondered how much sleep Ed had gotten—if any—since this had all started.

"You need anything?" Ed asked, after a moment, once he finally seemed satisfied with the way he'd folded the cloth. He'd wrapped it loosely round and round itself like a flattened-out jelly roll.

"Yeah," Al muttered sleepily, letting his eyes fall shut. "Chicken pot pie and some tea'd be nice."

He heard a snort, and felt Ed whack his forehead lightly. "Yeah, okay. I'll get right on that."

tbc~


	10. Chapter 10

_The Spider's Web _

_Chapter 10_

As it turned out, Al never did have to worry about not waking up that particular time. In fact, he felt like he'd barely closed his eyes at all before Marie was back in the cell, her arms full of a soaking wet bed sheet that she must have taken from one of the other cells or from the old prison stores, telling Ed to prop him upright. Apparently, she deemed it more important that they get the swelling in his arms down than it was to have him sleep, and Ed agreed.

She wasn't her usual nervous self, or flitting about the cell now—now that she had a definitive task to do, it seemed, she was focused, levelheaded.

"Hold him steady," she was saying to Edward, actually taking Ed's arms in her hands and wrapping them tightly around Al's stomach. "It may not hurt now," she continued, "but it will in a few minutes, and he may not be able to help struggling. A bad fall off the bed is the last thing he needs."

Al was too busy eyeing the sodden sheet in her arms with trepidation to be bemused at the fact that she was speaking as though he couldn't hear her.

His guess was, the second the swelling began to go down, he was going to remember acutely just how badly his arms were broken.

"Better this than no arms at all, right?" said Ed's voice in his ear, in an attempt at reassurance.

"Yeah," Al managed in reply.

But he nearly retched a few seconds after the sheet touched his skin. He felt Ed's arms tighten their hold around his middle as Marie twisted and maneuvered the sheet to twine its way up and down his arms. The sheer coldness of the thing pressed into his chest like a sheet of ice, and all at once, his arms seemed to come to life again, like exposed, crackling electrical wires had tightened themselves around every inch of his bones.

It wasn't until it was done with—his arms swathed in a wet gray mound of cloth that sat on his chest—that Al realized he'd been crying, or shaking. Ed was laying him back down on the cot. They'd managed to coax some water and more acetaminophen pills into him, but the soup Marie had brought was a lost cause. He was barely confident he could keep the water down right now.

He blinked his stinging eyes, doing his best to ignore the entire existence of his arms.

_Well, so much for a brave front…_

Marie's fingers lighted on his forehead. "No break in the fever," she said, handing Edward a rag. "With a poison engineered to replicate a believable illness, I'd expect there to be at least some fluctuation in his temperature, but…" she trailed off, with a bit of a helpless shrug, her eyes grim.

Ed swore under his breath at that. He swiped his thumb at a tear or two on Al's cheek, before laying the rag over his eyes. His hand slid around to the back of Al's neck and gave it a brief squeeze.

"Thanks," Al croaked.

"Yeah."

"You can try and rest now," Marie was saying. "But when you wake up, you've got to eat something."

"Okay."

"Rest wouldn't be a bad idea for you either, Edward. There might not be space on the cot for the two of you, but—"

Marie's words died away quite suddenly. They were replaced by one long, shaky inhalation as another sound echoed through the cell, and, from the sound of it, down the hallway outside, reverberating all-too-sharply off the walls.

It was the unmistakable _clack-clack-clack _of a woman's high-heeled shoes.

"Viv," Marie breathed.

Al felt Ed tense. "You haven't been to see her yet, have you?"

"No." The word was barely audible.

As the footsteps grew louder, Al tried to turn his head, and dislodge the washcloth—the last thing he wanted was to be rendered both immobile and blind around this viper of a woman—but Ed's hand pressed down over the washcloth, hard. He felt Ed's other arm reach across his stomach, in what he immediately knew to be a protective gesture, though his hand was balled into a fist and his whole arm was trembling. But not from fear, that much was apparent, to Al at least—but from anger. Heaven help this woman if she was fool enough to keep a wall of steel bars between Edward and herself.

"What do you want?" he heard Ed demand the moment the footsteps came to an abrupt halt. His tone was low, mutinous.

Somewhere off to the side, there was a rustling, as though Marie was rummaging for something.

"Checking on Maria's patient, of course." That was Vivian. Obviously. The odd part of it was, he'd have thought that such words would be accompanied by some sort of vindictive sarcasm, coming from a woman as sure of herself as Vivian Valera. But there was none. The words were spoken with cold precision. And hatred.

"I was going to come to you," Marie muttered. "We agreed—"

"We agreed you'd come when the job was done, Maria," Vivian cut in, impatiently. "Not hours and hours afterwards. I had urgent matters to attend to for Uncle, or I'd have come and seen to the whole affair myself…"

"Affair," Marie repeated, quietly. Incredulously. "And does it matter?" she shot at Vivian, her own voice rising now. "Just _look _at him."

There was a brief silence, and Al heard Vivian take a step or two closer to them before uttering a thoughtful "Hm."

"Well? Are you satisfied?" The question was bitter, subdued.

"_No_," Vivian said, slowly, as though she were speaking to a dull-witted, disobedient child. "_Because, _Maria, you were explicitly instructed to—"

"To hell with my instructions," Marie hissed.

There was a beat of silence before Vivian scoffed, and Al guessed that though Vivian was the one person in her family that Marie was actually willing to stand up to, it probably didn't happen very often.

"There's a plan, Maria," Vivian snapped. "Stop being a child."

But it seemed that the floodgates had been opened. "A child?" Marie repeated. Her voice shook—Al almost wished he could see her. "_I'm _not a child. _He _is."

"Maria," Vivian repeated, her own voice taut with an unspoken threat.

Then there was an odd sound—a _stomp-stomp-stomp _of purposeful feet crossing the cell floor, followed by the tinkling of shattered glass.

Vivian inhaled sharply, and it sounded as though she had taken a step back. Even Ed, who had said nothing during this whole exchange, made a small startled noise.

Wait, did…

Had she just _thrown _the syringe at Vivian through the bars?

"There's your proof," Marie practically spat.

Yes, it seemed she had.

There was a long silence. Then, another _crunch _of glass—Vivian must have stepped on some fragments of the syringe—followed by a sigh.

"You choose to be blind to all of the things that these _children _have done," Vivian said, coldly. "They ruined us."

"_No, _they ruined _Uncle, _and that's just your opinion, Viv," Marie was nearly shouting now. "Yes, they're prodigies. Nobody's denying that. But come now, do you honestly believe that all of the military's elite, not to mention the Flame Alchemist of all people, would have remained blind to the fact that their whole system was rotten to the core if these two hadn't been there? The Fuhrer—"

"_Maria." _ Vivian's voice was deadly.

Another silence. All Al could hear was Marie, panting slightly.

"Maria, you're to come back with me and report to Uncle," Vivian snapped. "_Now." _

"No." Marie's voice was quiet.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm staying here," she repeated, her voice a bit shaky but louder.

Almost immediately, there was a crashing, jarring noise that set Al's teeth on edge—as if something, or somebody, had just collided with the wall of bars. He heard Marie cry out.

Al started and tried to turn his head again. Vivian must have pulled at her arm through the bars and slammed her bodily into them—or something equally unpleasant—but Ed pushed his hand down even harder over his eyes. The message was clear. _Don't. _

And then Al understood what Ed had been trying to do. He could feel that Ed was shaking all over with positive fury over what he was witnessing now—could feel the very same gut urge to get up and _do _something to stop this—but he realized why Ed was staying put, and keeping him still. It was to deflect Vivian's attention. For all she knew, Al was unconscious right now, and if that was the case, she had no reason to enter the cell, to come near him again. And he was grateful for it, but his stomach took a nosedive as Marie stifled a pained whimper.

"Perhaps I should remind you what's at stake for you here, Maria." Vivian's voice was a snarl now. Marie cried out again.

"If y-you hurt Lissie and A-anthony," Marie managed, haltingly, through gritted teeth, "I will kill you, Viv…."

Vivian barked a laugh. Short, loud, and harsh. Near manic. "Do it."

TBC—


End file.
